A Year of Stop-and-Frisk, One Tweet at a Time

Going through @stopandfrisk‘s timeline on Twitter, one phrase jumps out at you: “No weapon is found.” Every five minutes, the account tweets a short description of one of the 685,742 stops that occurred in 2011, and only one percent of those stops actually turned up a weapon. Here’s a sampling:

01/06/11: Police stop a 31-year-old in Queens, citing “casing a victim or location.” No weapon is found.

It’s a fascinating, albeit extremely bleak look at the sheer numbers behind the NYPD’s most notorious practice. That might explain the fact that @stopandfrisk only has 139 followers. It’s kind of overwhelming how often this thing pops up on your feed with a new stop.

Perhaps most damning: as Robin Jackspoints out, even tweeting once every five minutes, it will still take years before the account gets to the end of 2011.